my exposure to wicked (the original broadway musical) is limited to early memories of how much my mom liked it. every time someone would call her, defying gravity would start blasting through our house at full volume. the poster was the background on her old phone, she'd listen to the songs while she was working, and sometimes sing it to herself while she was busy. i'm weirdly nostalgic for it, but in a weird second-hand kind of way, because i've never seen the original musical. i've never even heard a plot summary. i can't speak to how good of an adaptation this is, i can only really judge it based on how it stands as its own movie.

i really like the set design and costume design in this! while i have my criticism of this movie, i really think that the movie excels here. i did like it visually - the colors felt weirdly washed out, maybe, but this feels like kind of a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things. the visuals were great throughout, and it's good that they were a little more ambitious with things they couldn't necessarily do in a live version of this. (talking goats, the scene where elphaba sees her child self in the glass, et cetera et cetera blah blah.) the music was great too. yes, this is owed to the original musical, but they did cast actors who can sing. not many notes there.

now i complain, though. the pacing is a little bit crazy. it felt too fast and too slow all at once, and it could be a little disorienting. i feel like this was especially glaring in some of the songs. in musicals it's pretty par for the course for characters to interrupt their songs to deliver lines or say something to another character. they make it flow with the music and it's more often than not a fun little moment. emphasis on little - wicked stretches out these moments to an obnoxiously long length and it messes with the groove of the music. kind of a nitpick, again, but it bothered me enough that i'm still thinking about it. let me enjoy the song in its entirety, dammit!

despite spending almost three hours with these characters, i feel like i don't really know elphaba - glinda even less so. i understand their motivations, definitely important for a story, especially for a musical, but i don't feel like these characters are fleshed out much beneath that. the romance plotline feels maybe a little bit shoehorned in there, but i guess i'm just going to have to see if it resolves itself in the next movie. having a part 2 to begin with is kind of crazy to me, since the entirety of the musical is about the length of this movie - which only spans half of the story.

one last complaint! the casting. obligatory disclaimer that i couldn't care less about the celebrity drama surrounding any of the actors. anyways; i thought the casting was good for 99% of the characters - and with elphaba, the casting was great. cynthia erivo is a great actress and she has a voice that is both beautiful and very befitting of her character. her performance as elphaba was absolutely my favorite part of the movie. no notes, no complaints. however - i don't think ariana grande was a great choice for glinda. it's not necessarily that she's bad - she's a pefectly good actor, and she's good at singing. (as an obscenely famous pop star should be. lol) my biggest problem is that she's just not convincing. when i see any of the other characters on screen, i see the character. when i see ariana grande's performance as glinda, i see ariana grande trying to be kristin chenoweth playing glinda. does this make any sense? i suspect a large portion of this isn't her fault. she's obscenely famous, like i said, and casting celebrities is difficult because so often you just see the celebrity and not their character. still, though, i wish she had leaned more into her own version of the character instead of sticking so closely to a different performance of her... if this makes any sense.

i don't want to come off like i hate this movie - i don't, i thought it was fine, and it was fun to watch with people i like. (despite my rapidly worsening sinus infection at the time.) despite my gripes i'm sure i'll still give the second part a watch when it comes out and when i've got the time.